Why "The Singularity" Scares the Bejesus Out of Me

More and more, I am seeing research and advancements that suggest that Ray Kurzweil isn't as far off as I would like to believe he is with the whole singularity thing. For those who don't know about this, here is a definition of the technological singularity that Kurzweil promotes.

The technological singularity is the theoretical future point which takes place during a period of accelerating change sometime after the creation of a superintelligence.^[1]

In 1965, I. J. Good first wrote of an "intelligence explosion", suggesting that if machines could even slightly surpass human intellect, they could improve their own designs in ways unforeseen by their designers, and thus recursively augment themselves into far greater intelligences. The first such improvements might be small, but as the machine became more intelligent it would become better at becoming more intelligent, which could lead to an exponential and quite sudden growth in intelligence.

In 1993, Vernor Vinge called this event "the Singularity" as an analogy between the breakdown of modern physics near a gravitational singularity and the drastic change in society he argues would occur following an intelligence explosion. In the 1980s, Vinge popularized the concept in lectures, essays, and science fiction. More recently, some prominent technologists such as Bill Joy, founder of Sun Microsystems, voiced concern over the potential dangers of Vinge's singularity.(Joy 2000)

Today I just came across an article about a join effort between Google and NASA to develop such a technological advancement. Here is the article, which is reporting on the new Singularity University.

NASA & Google Join Forces to Research Singularity -the "Intellegence Revolution" (VIDEO)

It is the best of times. Anyone who complains about science not delivering it's promises simply doesn't comprehend how incredible this information age truly is: you can go to the mall RIGHT NOW and buy devices which would have reshaped the world ten years ago, are reshaping it today, and technology isn't slowing down - it's accelerating exponentially. There are incredible innovations just around the corner and that's the thinking behind the creation of Singularity University..

An advanced academic institution sponsored by leading lights including NASA and Google (so it couldn't sound smarter if Brainiac 5 traveled back in time to attend the opening ceremony). The "Singularity" is the idea of a future point where super-human intellects are created, turbo-boosting the already exponential rate of technological improvement and triggering a fundamental change in human society - after the Agricultural Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution, we would have the Intelligence Revolution

Real AI effects are closer than you might think, with entirely automated systems producing new scientific results and even holding patents on minor inventions. The key factor in singularity scenarios is the positive-feedback loop of self-improvement: once something is even slightly smarter than humanity, it can start to improve itself or design new intelligences faster than we can leading to an intelligence explosion designed by something that isn't us.

The Singularity University proposes to train people to deal with the accelerating evolution of technology, both in terms of understanding the directions and harnessing the potential of new interactions between branches of science like artificial intelligence, genetic engineering and nanotechnology.

Inventor and author Raymond Kurzweil is one of the forces behind SU, which we presume will have the most awesomely equipped pranks of all time ("Check it out, we replaced the Professor's chair with an adaptive holographic robot!"), and it isn't the only institutions he's helped found. There's also the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence whose sole function is based on the exponential AI increases predicted. The idea is that the first AI created will have an enormous advantage over all that follow, upgrading itself at a rate they can never catch up on simply because it started first, so the Institute wants to work to create a benevolent AI to guard us against all that might follow.

Make no mistake: the AI race is on, and Raymond wants us to win.

This is all very interesting and may well produce some technology that improves our lives for the better - but to be honest, this shit scares the bejesus out of me.

As near as I can tell, reaching the singularity puts our society at risk of technological disaster. When you have a few people evolved enough to create that technology (the cutting edge of human development in the intellectual/cognitive line), you have many more people still at lower moral developmental stages (possibly including the inventors themselves - there is no reason to believe that cognitive development is paired with moral development) who would use that technology to generate power and wealth, which is necessarily an egocentric drive.

We could seriously end up with an elite class who have access to the technology to extend life, avoid illness, increase intelligence, and so on - but those people won't likely be the most developmentally advanced people, nor the most morally developed or compassionate people. It will be the richest people.

So the downside is that there won't be compassionate use of the technology, but rather egocentric use, which will likely lead to catastrophe.

It's the same principle as allowing tribal/egocentric cultures to acquire nuclear weapons - there is NOT the developmental maturity to handle the technology.

Suppose, as Kuzweil has argued, that nanobots become a reality in healing disease and extending life in the next couple of decades. Who will be able to afford these things? Not me, and likely not you. Only the richest of people will have access to this technology. How will this impact our culture?

And suppose that not only do these nanobots prolong life and eliminate disease, maybe they increase intelligence or strength. Do we then have a "super race" of techno-humans, or transhumans? And if (or when) we do, how do we deal with this?

Where is the moral intelligence to deal with the technological advances we see escalating at an ever increasing rate? How do we prevent these advances from being weaponized?

Where is the spiritual intelligence to make sense of this in a world where the divide between rich and poor is greater than it has ever been, where the divide between those with an egocentric and worldcentric worldview is totally in favor of the lesser, more power-oriented worldview, and not the greater more compassionate worldview?

Is anyone else even asking these questions?

Tags: Psychology, technology, Transhumanism, ethics, technological singularity, Ray Kurzweil, Singularity University, nanobots, nanotechnology, Google, NASA, Singularity, Intellegence Revolution, Vernor Vinge